Angry parents question Falkirk plans to close rural school with 16 pupils

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Parents fighting plans to close a Falkirk school with just 16 pupils have been backed by a Conservative MSP who says closure would be "an act of devastation".

A report going to Falkirk Council's executive next week says that educating pupils at Blackness Primary cost around £25,000 per child last year - nearly five times the council average.

The report says that numbers attending from the catchment area have been ten or fewer since 2018 and Health Board projections show the picture is unlikely to change much. Read more: Falkirk councillor suspended for two months after 'disclosing confidential information' Members of the executive will be asked to decide whether or not to start a consultation on closing the school, which will involve parents and the wider community.If the closure is approved, pupils would be placed in Grange Primary School, whose headteacher and deputy head are also in charge of Blackness Primary and known to pupils.But the chair of Blackness parent council, Jann Fairley, is in no doubt that closing the school would be a huge loss to the community.And she has questions about the report which she thinks paints an unfair picture of the cost of running the school.The report claims that the cost of teaching staff is £165,956 which Mrs Fairley believes is far too high for a school with one full-time teacher, a shared head and depute head and another teacher who works one day a week at Blackness.In addition to challenging the council's figures, Mrs Fairley also thinks that other solutions should be considered, such as rezoning some of the new houses being built in Bo'ness to the Blackness catchment area in a bid to keep the school running.Last year, she and other parents fought hard to stop the school